“I Was There” Files: Finding Forever Listening Event

Like most people, if your head isn’t full of cotton, you like Common. Sometimes he may rap too slow and sometimes he may dress like he sells incense on Lenox ave but Common is an O.G. and you little badasses better respeck dat!

The good splaboos at Geffen huddled about 50 DJs and music people into a board room at Universal to hear Common himself babble about his latest and seventh release, Finding Forever (DROPS JULY 31ST!! COP DAT COP DAT!!).

The children at, sigh, datzwhatsup.net have pics. Conny’s stank ass is lurking around in some of these flicks.

So a couple things about the Com: He’s way too fine. Like, unnecessarily fine. And in this age of the almighty airbrush, Rasheed breezes in the room all healthy biceps pumping, looking better than any promo pic and looking a decade way more fly than his purported 35 years. I guess hippie veganism is the move.

Common comes in all gorgeous and first off thanks everyone for sticking with him through the years, even bigging up his fans who stood by “when he was dressing crazy.” Bless his little jokey jokes! And kids he wasn’t dressed like a zionist at soccer practice but instead coolly slick in a grey tweed hat, cream t-shirt with a floral print winding up the side (manly flowers though, don’t get it twisted), and dark overdyed denim dungarees.

Also, Com has a really endearing Chicago drawl and maybe it was because he was tired but his lips were wet with spit kinda like the special kid in third grade who had still draw with crayons while everyone else moved up to pencils. However, he was STILL SEXY so we’ll just move along.

Then homeboy went into all his tracks as follows:

The album opens with “Start The Show” which is a gritty, powerful opener with menacing violins and skraight up hip hop boom-bap flavor. Oh, excuse me, flava. Com said he was evoking the grimey, grinding beats of Gangstarr and Premier’s heyday. Holler.

Then he shows he blipster prowess on the pallid “Driving Me Wild” with talentless Union Jack ho, Lily Allen. If you’re gonna cross the waters for white girl soul you can’t settle on Allen’s breathy annoying coos to build a track around. My fave line was when he was talking about some girl being “on treadmills like OKGo.”

Rasheed said the track was about being obsessed with stuff.

“Southside” w/ Kanye is the only track featuring another MC. It’s on Kanye’s Can’t Tell Me Nothin’ mixtape and I personally think it should have been a first or second single (instead whatever yawns they put out instead. “The People”? Come on now…)

“Black Maybe” feat Bilal is melodic and features a Stevie Wonder sample. Stevie told him to take out the “b*tches” and “h*es* and “N*ggas” otherwise he couldn’t use the sample. So this song is basically clean. It’s really eloquent: “A white man’s yes is a black man’s maybe…”

“I Want You” produced by Will.I.Am is the requisite girl song. It’s a hokey waste of my time and sounds more like the theme song to some afrocentric cartoon show. I did make a note saying, “raining synths.” I can be extra at times…

“Break My Heart” is the one the crowd luuuubbed. Uproarious applause and shouts of, “you da man, ‘Sheed!” when this one faded out. Apparently, Kanye made this song, and several other tracks on the album as an homage to J.Dilla and Com says his influence is clear here. However, for the ladies, this song basically says HE’LL NEVER GET MARRIED and thus this song is stupid. But of course not really – it’s gunning to be the next single.

“Misunderstood” has this brooding Nina Simone sample and was produced not by Kanye, but Kanye’s cousin, Devo Springsteen. So, fake Kanye. My notes on this were, “it sounds like jail, chains clanging against steel.” Go figure. I did get teary eyed when Common really broke it down about how it was about good people who make bad decisions…

The album closes out with “Forever Begins” which is the perfect way to end it. It’s this New Agey piano with a funkaaay choir which are usually affairs of la douche but ya boy really rode this one. I actually thought it was a beautiful muthafuckin’ thing. It’s big and epic and Common dropping his seventh album deserves some rowdy fanfare.

Sorry; I had to delete it, as I got sick of having to keep up with the negro foolishness happening in our world every day. It was too much–there’s simply too much shucking and jiving to cover it all. However, I will be visiting you on this website regularly. This way I can keep up with the foolishness you encounter. Sorry I mis-identified you in those pics. I need to go back adn find the girl in the black dress!

Okay; I found you in the pics. You look so nice. I love the hair! And Common looks good; but isn’t there something about him that just lets you know he’s a little “off”: the eyes, the way he speaks? And of course, the fact that he got all crazy with Erykah. Don’t trust that negro, I bet he could f*ck a girl in the head pretty good.